


But Not for Love

by Mireille



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Hanahaki Disease, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 15:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20229814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Great. He was being murdered by a magical disease with a sense of humor.Tony's coughing up flowers. The SHIELD database can't possibly be right about why.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI: I tweaked the common versions of Hanahaki disease to fit better with the universe and the story I was trying to tell (including things like the origin of the name). Since it's a fictional trope, I have no qualms with altering it to fit my needs.

****

_But these are all lies: men have died from time to_  
_time and worms have eaten them, but not for love."_  
_\--Shakespeare, As You Like It_

****

Tony wasn't sure he'd ever been this tired before, even in Afghanistan. Exhaustion had sunk deep into his bones, and despite the fact that his stomach was growling and the shawarma was good, chewing and swallowing felt like entirely too much effort.

He looked around at the rest of the--were they even a team? They'd managed to act like one, there at the end, but was it going to last? And if so, how did he even feel about that? It wasn't like he played well with others. 

And if not, how did he feel about _that_? It had felt good knowing there were people who had Iron Man's back.

Whatever they were, they all looked as weary as he felt. Even Thor, so Tony couldn't be too down on himself about how completely _beat_ he was. If the God of Thunder was practically asleep in his chair, Tony could feel pretty good about still being mostly awake. 

As he looked around the table, his eyes met Rogers' for a minute. God damn, but the man was annoying as hell. They'd made a good team on the helicarrier, and _fine_, he lived up to the legend no matter how much Tony hated to admit it. That didn't mean he liked Rogers, and it didn't mean that Rogers liked him any better. 

But since they could put that aside when it mattered, clearly that wasn't a big deal. They were the Avengers, not the Super-Special Best Friends Club. They needed to be able to work together; they didn't need to be friends.

Rogers raised an eyebrow, and Tony realized that he'd been staring. Or too tired to look away, at least. Not too tired to mess with the old fossil's head a little, though. Tony smiled at him, a warm, secret smile that had helped him charm his way into a lot of beds before now. 

He wasn't even sure if Rogers would pick up on the subtext behind it. The guy was more squeaky-clean than a whole troop of Cub Scouts. 

But then Rogers broke eye contact, and Tony realized there was a faint tinge of pink staining his cheeks. Ha. He had noticed, and poor Cap didn't know what to do about it. 

But then Rogers looked back at him and smiled back just as warmly. And then he winked. It made the smile look just a little wicked.

Tony grabbed his drink, taking a quick gulp to cover the fact that he was totally nonplussed by that. At least, he'd meant it to cover that, but then Rogers' smile slid into a smirk, and Tony could practically read the man's thoughts: _Two can play at that game, Stark._

The soda went down the wrong way, and Tony spluttered and choked; it turned into a cough that wouldn't quit, probably his lungs reacting to all the crap in the air after the battle. Even once he caught his breath, his chest felt tight, like he couldn't quite get enough oxygen. 

"I'm good," he said quickly, just in time to stop Thor--who'd jumped up and come behind Tony's chair--from giving him a spine-crushing thump on the back. "Something just went down the wrong pipe." 

He grabbed a napkin and dabbed at his lips, then wiped his hand clean, like he'd gotten some saliva or some half-chewed bit of food on it when he coughed. 

He wadded the napkin up into a tight ball, then, when no one else was looking, slipped it into his pocket, before anyone could see that Tony had coughed up a wad of what looked like white flower petals.

****

In the end, Tony had to break in to the SHIELD classified databases (again) to find out what was going on with him, and even then, he didn't believe it.

The SHIELD scientists were calling it "Hanahaki syndrome," after a Japanese researcher who was the first person to have identified it, back in the 1950s. It was incredibly rare--only fifty or so confirmed cases recorded worldwide in the last century, and a few more anecdotal records--and of unknown origin. 

Well, SHIELD didn't say it was of unknown origin, and neither had Hanahaki. _Magical_ origin was what they said, but Tony was adamant that "a wizard did it" was just another way to say "we don't have a clue." Even now that he'd seen so-called magic up close, he was still inclined to believe that it was a combination of sufficiently advanced technology and perhaps psionic abilities. 

So it wasn't magical. It might be alien; that would make sense, since he'd only started coughing after what the papers were calling the Battle of New York. An alien fungal infection, perhaps, growths in his lungs that only _looked_ like tiny, white, pointed flower petals. 

True, Jarvis had been able to identify the petals as edelweiss, but there were only so many potential shapes in the universe, so the exact form of the fungal growths was probably irrelevant.

The other thing he had trouble believing in was the supposed cause of the syndrome. Tony had no idea where Hanahaki had gotten his degree, but it must have been a "save up cereal box tops, and we'll send you this shiny PhD.!" kind of situation, because Hanahaki hadn't identified any pathogen associated with the disease, even after biopsying the lungs of deceased victims. (And, from both Hanahaki's research and SHIELD's, there were almost nothing _but_ deceased victims.)

No, apparently it was _unrequited love_ that caused the disease. Unrequited love could cause a lot of things--heavy drinking, reams of truly terrible poetry, a tendency to play the Cure on repeat--but it couldn't cause the permanent tightness in Tony's chest, the coughing fits, or the clumps of white petals (sometimes tinged with spots of blood, if the fit was particularly bad) that he hid and then stuffed down the garbage disposal when Pepper wasn't around. 

And that was the other thing: even if the researchers were right, Tony wouldn't be susceptible. He wasn't in unrequited love with anyone. The only person he was in love with was Pepper, and she definitely returned the feeling. 

He hadn't been in unrequited love with anyone since he was maybe thirteen, and that had been his chemistry teacher. He'd been over that for decades.

So he was going to have to figure out exactly what was really going on, because clearly everything in SHIELD's files was pure crap. 

But right now, he had to get through today without anyone realizing that he was sick, and today was a particularly bad day. He'd woken himself up a couple of hours before dawn with a coughing fit, and had only just barely managed to keep the petals contained in his mouth until he got to the bathroom and could spit them into the toilet. Tony hadn't thought about the logistics of flushing massive clumps of blood-tinged petals until he'd had the need to keep Pepper from knowing about his little problem. Their tendency to float was a real issue. 

He swigged down a handful of cough suppressant capsules; they didn't help his breathing, but at least they made it less likely that he'd be spitting flowers everywhere. Besides, even if Pepper didn't notice the petals, she'd notice the cough, and she'd probably try to convince him to see a doctor.

If he thought it would do any good, he'd have done that already.

Every single case study he'd read had said the same thing: the only thing medical science could do was to help with the symptoms. Cough suppressants, painkillers, supplemental oxygen when the disease had progressed so far that it was difficult for the victim to breathe--all of those could provide some measure of comfort, but they didn't treat the problem. In all but three of the recorded cases, symptoms had progressed until the victims had died. 

Postmortem examinations had revealed masses of thick green vines growing in and around the victims' lungs. The flowers varied in both color and shape, but they were always present.

The three victims who had survived had all gone into spontaneous remission. That was where the "unrequited love" theory had come about; Hanahaki had noticed that in the first two remissions, the only thing that had changed in the patient's life had been the start of a new relationship, one with someone the patient had apparently been in love with for some time, with no expectation of that love being returned. 

And so, Dr. Shoddy Science had jumped to a ridiculous conclusion. At most, in Tony's opinion, the endorphins from the high of new love had stimulated the body's own ability to fight off the infection. 

Sure, after Hanahaki formed that theory, he'd started asking new patients about their love lives, but all that showed was that a lot of people wasted time loving people who didn't love them back. 

A couple of patients had refused to answer the question, too, so Hanahaki couldn't even say that there was a perfect correlation--not to mention that the third case of spontaneous remission had reported no such event in her life. Hanahaki had theorized that she'd fallen out of love with the object of her affections, but he hadn't been able to get that confirmed. 

The unrequited love theory was bullshit, but the rest of the evidence was pretty clear: Tony had weeks, maybe months, to live, and they were going to be painful months where he struggled for every breath. And unlike with the palladium poisoning, SHIELD wasn't going to be able to help him out, because SHIELD had bought into Hanahaki's theory. 

Pepper was going to find out eventually, but Tony wanted to put it off for as long as possible. He knew he shouldn't, but she'd just start doing some digging, and then she'd bury Tony wondering who it was that he'd loved so much that he'd died because of them. Maybe he could convince her, when it got too hard to hide, that it was lung cancer. If he described it as "growths in his lungs," it wouldn't even be a lie. 

He'd be damned if he let someone's shitty research methodology convince Pepper that he hadn't loved her. 

So Tony had to try to figure out a solution to this, which meant first figuring out what was actually going on; and he had to do it while keeping his condition a secret. Even if he managed to cure himself, he wasn't sure Pepper would forgive him a second time for not telling her he was dying. 

But right now, what he had to do was try to get in some work on the next version of his armor before it was time to go to a mission briefing, because while there was going to come a time when he was too sick to put on the suit, that time wasn't today. 

He coughed up another wad of petals; this time he wrapped them in toilet paper before flushing them, and they disappeared without leaving any trace.

****

The cough capsules kept Tony's cough reduced to a tickle in his throat for most of the morning while he tinkered in his workshop. He had one coughing fit--he'd been startled by Jarvis's reminder that it was time to get ready for the Avengers briefing--but a few gulps of lukewarm coffee had quelled it with only a single petal to dispose of.

But when he was sitting around the conference table, listening to Maria Hill explaining the situation that SHIELD needed the Avengers to deal with (well, the Avengers minus Thor, but given that Thor didn't even live on Earth, that was probably going to be the status quo), the coughing came back. 

There weren't any petals at first, thank God; his pockets only had a limited capacity, and while it would make sense for him to excuse himself if he were coughing, he was still going to wind up with some flowers to hide. 

Then Hill had broken the thread of her conversation to turn to Rogers and explain to him what a cell phone was, despite the fact that he owned one--Tony had made sure all the team had one of the newest StarkPhones, and had sent Rogers' phone via an intern who had tech support experience, to make sure he learned how to use it--and Rogers had just blinked at her for a moment. 

Then, with a perfectly deadpan expression, he'd said, "Really? I thought they were for, you know, sending signals in Morse code." He'd held up his turned-off phone, angling it so that the light reflected off the screen, and shrugged. "That explains why it didn't work so well."

There had been a second of stunned silence, and then Tony had started to laugh, delighted by what a smart-ass Captain America was turning out to be. It was all the more glorious because nobody expected it of him. Some of the others were laughing too--Barton cracked up so badly that he was actually snorting--but Tony suddenly had something else to worry about other than who had gotten the joke, because the laughing had triggered a coughing fit that left him doubled over. 

"Sorry," he said once he'd recovered and stashed the evidence in his jacket pocket. "Don't worry, it's not contagious--" at least, that was what SHIELD's database said, and _shit_, he had to be extra careful around Hill, she might have seen those files at some point-- "just seasonal allergies." 

There was a pitcher of water and some tumblers in the middle of the table; nobody had taken any yet, but now Rogers poured some water and pushed it over toward Tony. 

"Thanks, Cap," Tony got out through a throat that felt like he'd been swallowing glass. 

"No problem. I feel kind of responsible, since my dumb joke half killed you." He smiled at Tony.

The constriction in his chest that had been ever-present since the invasion tightened, and with it came a sickening thought. No, that absolutely couldn't be it.

It was absurd on every possible level, and Tony wasn't going to think about it at all. They had a mission coming up that afternoon, and that was what he needed to be concentrating on, not on the handful of white petals in his jacket pocket, or the way he could feel flowers blooming in his chest every time Rogers looked his way.

****

The mission had gone well enough, both in general and in terms of Tony's coughing; part of his tinkering that morning had been to install a nebulizer in the helmet to help ease his breathing while he was in the armor. It was only a temporary measure, but anything that kept him functional while he looked for a permanent solution was a good thing.

He'd steered clear of Cap as much as possible, and kept things strictly business the rest of the time, ignoring the comments he made that gave Tony a perfect opening for snark. He saved that for Barton and Romanoff, who didn't make Tony choke on edelweiss. 

They'd made a good team, the four of them--Banner was in reserve, in case they needed the Big Guy, but the gang they were going after caved as soon as they saw Captain America coming at them. They hadn't been able to hand over their alien tech, scavenged from the battle wreckage, quickly enough.

Tony couldn't blame them. Rogers was pretty damn impressive, suited up and brandishing that shield, especially if you had grown up on the comics and movies about Captain America. Which, basically, everyone had. 

Tony had ignored the ache in his lungs, had taken comfort in the fact that his armor would conceal whatever petals he coughed up. He'd clean them out later, and no one would be the wiser. 

When Tony had swooped in because Rogers' left side was exposed, and dealt with one of the goons who thought he might be able to get away, Rogers had given him a bright smile. "Good work," he said, and Tony had to turn away and cough and cough and cough. 

At least that gave him an excuse to skip the debrief afterward--Rogers had even suggested it, saying Tony should probably go home and get some rest, even if it was just allergies. 

The petals Tony burned in his workshop--with DUM-E standing at the ready with a fire extinguisher, because Tony liked living dangerously--were heavily spotted with blood. And along with the white petals were rounder ones, tinted with a soft blue, that Jarvis identified as forget-me-nots. 

This was still ridiculous. This was still impossible. For one thing, a disease that made you cough up flowers from unrequited love was total and unmitigated bullshit. For another, Tony wasn't in love with Steve Rogers. He didn't even like the man. 

He didn't find himself wanting to be a better person just because Rogers seemed to expect it of him. He didn't want to spend time with the guy and find out what else he'd make unexpectedly sarcastic comments about. He didn't want... okay, Tony did, indeed, want to strip him naked and lick every inch of that perfect body, but the files hadn't said anything about unrequited _lust_. Besides, that was him and probably every other person of a compatible orientation in the world.

He didn't want anything else from Steve Rogers, though. He definitely didn't want Rogers to _love_ him, even if thinking about that left him hacking up masses of bloody flowers. 

The SHIELD files couldn't be accurate, but they were all he had. If he believed them, the only way he'd survive more than six months at the absolute limit would be if he could get Captain America to fall in love with him, and that was never going to happen. 

If he didn't come up with a real cure, and quickly, he was going to die.

****

The average life expectancy of someone with Hanahaki syndrome was three months from the first appearance of the flowers.

Tony had coughed up the first petal of edelweiss ten weeks and two days ago. His illness seemed to be progressing slowly--he'd discovered that while the symptoms never went away completely, if he stayed away from Steve as much as he could, they remained at a level he could manage by self-medicating--but he was definitely on borrowed time. 

At least he had plenty of opportunity to work. He'd successfully kept the secret from Pepper, and he'd been proud of that until the night three weeks ago when he'd come home and discovered that she'd moved out. 

She'd picked up the phone when he called, at least, but only to tell him that if she was going to be spending all of her time alone and not knowing what was going on with Tony--only that there was obviously _something_ going on--then she might as well do that in her own apartment.

It didn't matter, because Tony hadn't found the cure for Hanahaki syndrome yet, and Pepper was going to be single within a few weeks, anyway. 

He didn't change the will he'd made when he and Pepper first got serious, except to make sure that the Avengers would be provided for with tech and funding. He couldn't think of anyone better to own Stark Industries than Pepper, anyway, girlfriend or not. Besides, he loved Pepper. Neither the disease nor the break-up changed anything about his feelings for her.

Maybe once this was all over, if he was successful, he could explain everything to her, and she'd take him back. If he played his cards right, he wouldn't have to explain the cause of the disease. 

He didn't want to explain, because all the evidence Tony could gather suggested that, as completely illogical as it was, Hanahaki had been right. This was about Steve. 

For one thing, his symptoms were radically worse around Steve. If they kept things on a relatively impersonal footing, it wasn't too bad, but if he let Steve get too close, too friendly, his lungs would fill and he'd feel like he was drowning. 

Distance helped, both physical and emotional. But keeping that distance was hard, especially since the team had moved into the tower and he saw Steve on a daily basis. 

He tried not to let himself get drawn into the day-to-day life of the team, sticking to his workshop and his apartment. But it was difficult, when he found himself caring about these people--not just about Steve--and actually wanted to spend time with them. 

But that didn't mean he was going to let himself be talked into Team Movie Night, which had started a couple of weeks ago when Clint had sent out an announcement that movie night was happening, if he thought Steve was going to be there. 

From what Tony had heard, the first one had been Clint and a bowl of popcorn, but last time everyone but Tony had showed up, even Thor, who'd been on Earth visiting Jane and had dropped by the tower to see his teammates, so running into Steve was a definite possibility.

Tony had been thinking about showing up tonight, because Steve was off on a mission for SHIELD and wasn't supposed to be back until morning. It was time he could spend researching his condition, true, but it was getting lonely, hiding out from everyone. Or, well, hiding out from Steve, but the end result was the same. 

And at least this way he could be sure that someone would miss him when he was gone. Which was possibly morbid and self-pitying, but if you couldn't be morbid and self-pitying when you were choking to death on flower petals, when could you be?

Just his luck, though: Tony had been partway through getting cleaned up from his day spent in the workshop when Jarvis announced, "Captain Rogers has returned to the tower, sir."

Damn. At least it proved that he'd been right to have Jarvis keep him alerted to Steve's comings and goings. He needed to know where Steve was if he was going to successfully avoid him. 

"Okay, thanks, J," Tony said. "Guess it's pizza and research tonight. Order my usual, huh?" He'd use the time to set up the protocols for tomorrow's tests. He probably wasn't doing his long-term health any favors, considering that he was trying to develop an inhalable herbicide that would destroy the plants rooted in his lungs, but then again, choking to death on blue and white flowers wasn't exactly great for his long term health, either. 

He got out of the shower, dried off, and started dressing. He'd just gotten into a pair of jeans when Jarvis interrupted again. "Sir, Captain Rogers is outside the door. He hasn't knocked, but he's been pacing there for just over three minutes."

What the hell did Steve want with him? If there'd been some kind of emergency, Jarvis would have raised an alert. "Let him in," Tony said. 

He pulled his shirt on over his head, then grabbed a large handkerchief from his drawer and shoved it into his pocket. He'd started using them after the first week or two. They were thicker than tissues, which made it harder for anyone to see what they contained, and it made perfect sense to stick a used handkerchief in his pocket, whereas someone observant, like a super-spy, might have wondered why he never threw his tissues into the trash. This way, it just looked like an affectation, and Tony could live with that. 

At least, for no longer than he'd have to. 

He definitely needed to be prepared. Steve showing up unannounced at Tony's front door? Tony was going to be coughing. 

Steve was already sitting on the couch when Tony came out into the living room. "Jarvis said I should make myself at home," he said. 

Even if Tony had intended to keep arguing against Hanahaki's theories, he wouldn't have been able to, from the way that, in addition to the tightness in his chest, something in the vicinity of his heart lurched at the sight of him. 

Tony swallowed hard, trying to fight back the cough. "Yeah, that's fine," he said. "What--" And then he had to break off, because he was suddenly wracked with deep hacking coughs that felt like something was tearing loose in his lungs. Tony grabbed his handkerchief from his pocket, catching the petals before any of them could escape. He only got a quick glimpse, but it looked like there was a lot more blood than he'd noticed before.

"Tony," Steve said, jumping up and crossing over to his side in a few long strides. "Tony, are you okay?"

Tony managed to give Steve a baleful look and shake his head before he started to choke again. 

"Yeah, all right, dumb question," Steve said. "Here, let me help you." He slung Tony's arm around his shoulder, slid his own arm around Tony's waist, and half-carried Tony over to the couch.

Tony settled onto the couch gratefully--all the coughing was _exhausting_\--and closed his eyes for a moment. 

"I'm going to get you some water," Steve said, and Tony could only nod. He waited until he heard Steve's footsteps moving away before he gave in to another coughing fit. 

Damn it. From the way this felt, he was almost out of time. 

He'd just about managed to catch his breath when Steve came back, setting a glass of water down on the table in front of Tony. "You should drink that." 

Tony held up a hand to ask for another few seconds. The coughing fit had subsided, the petals were stuffed in his pockets. He just needed to wipe his eyes; the violence of the coughing fit had brought tears to them. He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, as well, and then had to scrub that hand on the leg of his jeans before Steve saw the trace of blood that had been on his lips. 

At least, he hoped it was before Steve had seen the blood. Whether he had or not, he didn't say anything about it. 

Tony drank the water; it hurt to swallow, but the liquid helped a little. "Thanks," he said. "That was pretty bad." 

"Are your, uh, allergies, always that bad?"

"Not usually," Tony said. "I think maybe it's all that crap we inhaled during the battle?"

"Clint and Natasha seem fine," Steve said, "and you'd think they'd be affected too, since they don't heal like I do, and they didn't have helmets on." It made sense that he didn't mention Thor or Bruce; Bruce had been Hulked out most of the time, and Thor wasn't even human. 

"I don't know," Tony said. "I may have basically performed heart surgery on myself, but I'm not a doctor." 

"Think you should maybe see one?" 

"Nothing a doctor can do for this. Just allergies," he said again, and hoped Steve didn't realize that the "allergies" and "inhaled irritant" stories contradicted one another. 

"I came up here to see if I could get you to come down and watch movies with the rest of us," Steve said, "but now I'm thinking you should probably stay here and get some rest."

"I'll sleep when I'm dead," Tony said flippantly. _So in a couple of weeks, tops_.

"You should take care of yourself," Steve said. "We need you."

He shrugged. "Ah, Rhodey could fill in if I'm out of commission for a while." That was part of his plan, too. Rhodey got everything in Tony's workshop, the bots and Jarvis included, plus enough money that he could retire from the military. The Avengers would need War Machine full time, with Iron Man gone. 

"I'm not talking about Iron Man," Steve said. "We need Tony Stark." If Tony hadn't fallen for him at first sight, he'd have fallen in love with the way Steve smiled at him. 

"I'm not going anywhere," Tony lied. "But you should get going. You don't want to have to fight Natasha for the popcorn." 

"Yeah, you're right," Steve said. "But you'll let me know if there's anything you need?"

"I promise," Tony said, because what was one more lie?

Steve hesitated in the doorway for a moment, looking like there was something else he wanted to say. He must have thought better of it, though, because he turned and left without another word.

The door had no sooner closed behind him than Tony couldn't hold back the coughing any longer. This time, the coughing spell was so violent that he thought he felt something tear in his chest--muscle, cartilage, ligament, tendon, he wasn't sure. 

His handkerchief couldn't contain the flowers that spewed forth in wet, blood-speckled masses: loose petals and whole blooms both, edelweiss and forget-me-nots and... were those rose petals? 

That was new. Kind of a relief, too; there wasn't actually any more blood than there had been before; the additional red he'd seen had been from the deep crimson roses.

Then, as Tony slumped back, too drained and short of breath to do anything but look at the mess on the floor and coffee table, he made a face. White, blue, and now _red_ flowers. 

All right, this disease that was killing him _had_ to be magic, because that was just a little too fucking on the nose for it to be a pure coincidence. 

Great. He was being murdered by a magical disease with a sense of humor.

****

Tony didn't go to his workshop the next day, even though he did have some new ideas he wanted to test out. He hadn't given up--not entirely--but he was just too damn tired. 

Besides, he'd managed to have an oxygen set-up delivered in secret that morning, and he didn't think he could haul it around the tower with him without someone noticing. Right now, the thought of getting enough oxygen was too compelling to get him to leave his apartment. He'd go down there tonight to find out just how far off-base his new treatment strategy would be.

So, unfortunately for him, he was at home that afternoon--dozing on the couch because he didn't have the strength to do much else--when Jarvis said, "Sir, Captain Rogers is at the door again. He appears to be extremely angry." 

Tony ripped the cannula out of his nose. "Give me a second," he told Jarvis, then, as quickly as he could move--which was a lot slower than it had been before Steve Rogers had crashed into his life--dragged the oxygen tank across the room and shoved it into the coat closet. "Okay, let him in." 

He leaned back against the closet door and waited for Steve to come inside and tell him what had him so worked up. 

He wasn't expecting Steve to glare straight at him and say, "You're _dying_?" 

It was hard to deny, but Tony was going to try anyway. "Aren't we all? It's the basic human condition."

"You know what I mean," Steve said. "Yesterday, when you were coughing, I saw something fall. When I went to get you some water, I picked it up. Imagine my surprise when I found out you were coughing up flowers. I mean, how does that even happen?"

When it came right down to it, it was almost a relief to have someone besides Jarvis to talk about this with, even if it was Steve and therefore the entire conversation was dangerous ground. "Magic?" he said. "I mean, I still want to go with 'alien fungus,' but it's really starting to look like it might be magic." 

"Come on," Steve said abruptly. "You don't need to be standing there." When Tony didn't move, Steve went on, "Or I could pick you up and carry you over to the couch?" 

Tony shook his head. "Fine, I'm going. That's another thing they didn't mention about Captain America. You're not just a smart-ass, you're also the worst mother hen I've ever seen." 

He made his way back to the couch and slumped down. The worst part of all of this was how tired he was. It made it hard to do anything besides cough, and he needed to keep working; he could tell he didn't have much time left before he wouldn't have the strength to make it to the lab.

"I looked the coughing-flowers thing up on the internet," Steve said, sitting down next to Tony, but leaving some distance between them. 

"You actually use the internet?" Tony asked, and paid for his comment with a prolonged bout of coughing. He still caught the flowers in a handkerchief, both for the sake of hygiene and because he didn't want Steve to see what the flowers in his lungs looked like. The symbolism of the red, white, and blue flowers was obvious, and the man wasn't dumb. He didn't worry when a stray blue petal fluttered to the floor, though. Steve already knew, after all. 

"I may be over ninety years old, but I'm not an idiot," he said. "And I don't use my phone to send Morse code, remember? Between SHIELD's 'welcome to the future' briefings and that kid you sent to teach me how to use my phone, I know how to use the internet. And I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how you could be coughing flowers."

"Did you find anything?" Tony knew what was out there on the open internet to find: a few rumors and a little sketchy description. Dr. Hanahaki's work had been classified, and the disease was so rare that there weren't many references to it. 

"Not much," he said. "Then I tried the SHIELD databases."

Of course Captain America would have access to SHIELD's data. Tony coughed a few more times and then said, "And?" 

"That was a little more helpful," he said. "I had a hard time believing what I was reading, but I also have a hard time believing that you're coughing up... are those forget-me-nots?" 

"Among other things." 

"And considering we fought off an alien invasion not that long ago, if I decided not to believe things just because they're bizarre, I'd be in real trouble." 

Tony nodded. "So. You know. What are you going to do about it?"

"You're dying," Steve said again, twisting his hands together like he was trying to wring a solution out of them. 

"Not necessarily. I'm working on some things." Unsuccessfully, and he didn't have long to pull off a miracle, but Steve didn't need to know either of those things. 

The look Steve gave him suggested that he knew both of them already. "This is because you and Pepper broke up, right? I, uh. I'm assuming it really is caused by what that doctor theorized it was." 

God, Tony just wanted one good, deep breath. That would be enough to give him the strength to come up with a good lie to feed Steve. "No. This started before she left. She doesn't know that I'm sick, and she definitely doesn't know the cause. I don't want her to know," he added. "Not now, and not... later." Not when he was dead. "Promise me you won't tell her. It won't help me, and it'd just hurt her." 

"Yeah, of course," Steve agreed. "I won't tell anyone."

"Thanks." Steve probably wouldn't lie if Pepper asked him directly, but he wouldn't volunteer anything, and there was no way Pepper would think to ask. 

He started coughing again, doubling over from the force of it, and Steve put his arm around Tony, supporting him through it. That, of course, only made it worse, only made Tony even more aware of what a thoroughly decent guy Steve was. Of course Tony loved him. _Everybody_ loved him. 

Tony was just the only one who was going to die from it. 

"The stuff I read about this Hanahaki thing. It says there's one way to cure it," Steve offered, once Tony could breathe again. A few more petals had escaped him, white mixed in among the blue, and spots of red along the edges of the larger flowers. 

"There is," Tony said, "or there appears to be. But that's not an option."

"They really don't--I mean, I find that hard to imagine." Steve gave him a weak smile. "I thought the famous Tony Stark could get anyone he wanted." 

"There's at least one person who's not susceptible to my charms." His own answering smile was just as weak. "Too bad it's the one person I really need to charm." 

Steve ran a hand through his hair. "You know what's funny?"

"Please don't tell me that's the lead-in to repeating one of Clint's jokes."

"Not that kind of funny. But I was just thinking, not two days ago, that I should stop feeling sorry for myself, because it's not like anybody has ever died from rejection." Tony could hear the bitterness in Steve's chuckle. 

"Yeah, that's what you always hear. Turns out that if you're _really_ lucky, you can." 

Steve's smile still looked forced. "I suppose now I can just tell myself that it could be worse." He'd left his arm resting against Tony's back. Tony wanted to pull away. He wanted to stay there forever. 

Then what Steve had been saying sunk in. "You're interested in someone who doesn't want you, and you were surprised that it happened to me? Steve, have you met yourself? Have you looked at yourself? I mean, I guess if she was married, or a lesbian, but otherwise--"

"He's not married," Steve said. "And unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding something, he's not a lesbian." 

That caught Tony by surprise. "Oh. Uh. I guess I thought you were straight." 

"Yeah. I'm generally happy to let people think that." He shrugged. "I have a hard time remembering that things are different these days; I spent too many years needing to hide. But I told myself that I'd at least tell the truth if it came up in conversation, so..." 

It must be somebody from SHIELD, Tony thought. That would make sense. Those were the kind of guys who'd really _get_ somebody like Steve, the kind of man that Steve would find appealing. Broad-shouldered, square-jawed, responsible, respectable, reliable. Not one of their spies, but maybe a tech specialist? Someone from the STRIKE team? 

Whoever he was, Tony hated him. 

"I get that," Tony said, trying to ignore the ache in his chest. "There's stuff I don't tell most people, too."

"The same kind of thing?" 

"Yeah. I mean, it's not a lie that I really do like women a lot. Which, I guess, makes it easier to hide that I don't _only_ like women." He sighed, and then immediately wished he hadn't. 

There weren't that many flowers this time, which Tony knew better than to assume was a good sign. It wasn't. From what he'd read, it was a sign that the mass of plant matter in his lungs was getting compacted enough that it was hard to shake any individual blooms free. 

"So this person who doesn't want Tony Stark," Steve said, his palm pressed flat and warm between Tony's shoulder blades, "Man or woman?" Then he hesitated. "You don't have to tell me. I just thought maybe it would help a little to talk about it." 

"It won't help anything," Tony said. Except maybe it would, a little. He'd still be dying, but maybe telling Steve a little--not enough for him to recognize himself, of course--would feel better. Not physically, of course, but emotionally. 

"It's a guy," he continued before Steve could say anything else. "For a long time, I thought I knew everything about him, and I wasn't all that impressed."

The entire world thought they knew Captain America, because they'd seen the movies and read the comics and watched the documentaries; because people had done dissertations on him; because they'd grown up listening to their fathers tell them that no matter what they did, they would _never_ be as good of a man as his friend, Steve Rogers. (Okay, maybe that last one was just Tony.) 

"But then I saw him in an entirely different light, and..." He shrugged again. "Then I was doomed. Literally, it looks like." 

"He's an idiot," Steve said loyally. "Who wouldn't want to be with you?"

And that was it, that was too much. He could feel something tearing loose in his chest, roots pulling themselves free from the force of his coughing and the frantic attempts to get air into his lungs. He couldn't even bother to worry about the flower petals; he coughed into his elbow, and the flowers spilled out, over his arm and down to the floor, more blue and white and red petals than he thought could be packed into his torso. 

"Tony?" Steve said, his arm tightening around Tony again. "It's okay, breathe, we're going to figure this all out, we're going to fix this, _please_ just hang on." 

Tony didn't know what "hanging on" meant in this case. Trying to breathe? He was going to do that. He wasn't going to give up that easily. He'd fight this until it killed him, but if Steve was going to keep being nice to him, that wasn't going to take long. 

Then he realized that Steve had stopped talking. The pressure in his lungs eased a little bit, enough that he could focus again, and then the next thing he realized was that Steve was staring at the flowers on the floor, the improbably-large spread of flowers and loose petals, in the colors of the flag. The colors of Steve's shield. 

"Oh," Steve said, very softly. "Oh, _Tony_." 

Tony's voice was a croak; he wasn't even sure he was loud enough to be heard. "Yeah," he said. "So now you know who wouldn't want to be with me." 

"_Tony_," Steve said again, and Tony had the feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff in a strong wind. 

Then Steve cupped Tony's chin in his free hand, gently turning Tony to face him directly. Tony was still wheezing, his throat was on fire, and his head was spinning from lack of oxygen, but he didn't protest at all when Steve bent down and kissed him. 

The kiss was soft, hesitant, almost chaste, but there was no way to misinterpret the meaning behind it. 

"Who wouldn't want to be with you?" Steve said quietly, just millimeters from Tony's mouth. 

It was getting easier to breathe, Tony realized, though he didn't want to try to read too much into that. He didn't want to hope, and then have that taken away. "So that guy who isn't interested in you," he said, as the pain in his chest started to recede. "Do I know him?"

"Not as well as you think you do," Steve said, "but you've spent a lot of time with him." Steve kissed him again, still hesitantly, and this time, Tony wasn't too stunned to kiss back. 

There was one horrifying moment when they pulled apart and Tony felt the familiar tickle in the back of his throat, but when he coughed, it was only once, and all that he produced was one withered white petal, untinged by blood.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like happy endings, stop here. Otherwise, there's an epilogue.


	2. The Optional Yet Inevitable Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Repeating myself from last chapter: If you like happy endings, stop now. 
> 
> Otherwise, there's this.

****

He was going to die here. He was going to die in Siberia, of all places. And of all the people Tony would ever have expected to kill him, and there was quite the list...

He had some cracked ribs, he was pretty sure, and one of them must have punctured a lung, because it felt like he was drowning. Internal bleeding, he told himself, but Friday was offline and he couldn't get her to scan him and tell him the extent of the damage. 

Not that it mattered, because here he was, in Siberia. Nobody was going to come and get him, and he sure as hell wasn't going to be able to walk out under his own steam. Steve had made sure of that. So even if the damage wouldn't normally be fatal, he wasn't going to get out of here alive. 

The feeling that his lungs were filling up continued, and Tony made himself cough, trying to get a deep breath. He wasn't giving up without a fight, and he knew the important thing was to try to keep himself from suffocating. 

His broken ribs protested, but Tony kept trying to clear his lungs, to cough up whatever blood or other fluids were in there. Finally, he succeeded; he turned his head and spat the blood and phlegm out onto the ground. 

Or at least, that was what he'd expected to see. Instead, while there was some blood, what he'd actually coughed up was a clump of flower petals, red and white and blue. 

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't help it. The whole genesis of this fic was someone asking in a chat whether someone could get hanahaki disease twice, so.... 
> 
> (You can tell yourself that T'Challa gets him out of there, and Wakanda knows how to cure it.)

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found on [dreamwidth](https://mireille719.dreamwidth.org/).


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